+4 votes
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4 Answers

+5 votes
by

The woman at 1:13 thumbs her nose at the camera.

But the little girl at 2:17 can smile happily.

+4 votes
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The quality is beautiful! Very fine restoration. 

I noticed a Woolworth store...and, the classic architecture in Germany was more beautiful than I ever imagined. 

I also kept remembering that all this was 75 years ago now...it appeared so immediate, so compelling somehow.

The bucket brigades...I was also thinking of the 'rubble-women,' I am quite sure I learned about them from Other Tink. Also I was reminded this film as a testimony to the indomitable human spirit, smiles and life continues through all the devastation.

It's a good find, a good post SFA

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+2

As with so many things like this I just stumbled across it when searching for something entirely different.

+4 votes
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Those Russian broads sure have changed since then!!!! 

+3 votes
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+2

:D.......

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+3

The clip ends with an ironic note: Showing the 1945 ruins of the Sportpalast, they dub in Goebbels' voice giving his 1943 speech there (shortly after Stalingrad), where he asks his cheering audience: "I ask you, do you want total war?"

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+2

Tink...talk about a "Greatest Generation"...do you ever think about these people who lived through this era in Germany? They lived during that Depression, the hyperinflation, the Nazi regime -- and then they cleaned up those thousands upon K's of bombed-out cities...I'm sure it was you who taught me about the rubble-women? And we see them in these videos!

I think we must include the common folk of Germany in that Greatest Generation.

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+1

Having a degree in History I don’t think I ever studied the lives of German civilians during and just after WW2.

I do remember a History tutor in Uni almost getting apoplectic when I questioned the bombing of Dresden.

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+2

Without looking it up, it seems that sometime ago I might recall that the bombing of Dresden was done just to bring disheartenment to the populace? -- that there were actually no military targets there?

These videos are a heartfelt and poignant look into the aftermath...again, the irrepressible good spirits as people go about amidst the devastation. I don't like AI as it relates to surveilling humankind, but the channel gives credit to the bots for their work in restoring this old footage...what I would consider as aspect of AI proper use.

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+3

There were very few military targets in Dresden, other than rail centers used for transport of troops and supplies.

A similar raid was conducted against the much smaller city of Würzburg about a month later (and three weeks before the city surrendered to American ground forces anyway), with even less justification. There are still hard feelings today in Würzburg against the British over that needless raid, which destroyed 89% of the town.

"On a relative scale, Würzburg was destroyed to a larger extent than was Dresden in a firebombing the previous month"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_W%C3%BCrzburg_in_World_War_II

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+2

Tink, i have a personal story, from a friend...I just looked up the date, this would have been February 13, 1945. My friend's name is Dagmar, and she must have been born 1942 or '43...in Germany. Her middle name is Elfie, her mother wanted that as her first name but all baby names had to be approved by the authorities and Elfie was considered too mystical/magical for a first name.

So she became Dagmar, the warrior queen, Dagmar Elfie much more acceptable. And the time came, the bombing was so heavy that mothers with tiny children were given a small window of time, only maybe 3-4 days, to board the train and take their little ones out to the countryside, safer. So all her mother's friends said, "DON'T take the train through Berlin, which gets bombed so often, take the train through Dresden."

But Dagmar's mother said, "No no, I must not take the train through Dresden, we will go through Berlin."

And then that very night Dagmar and her mother were on the train...Dresden was bombed for the first time ever.

*  *  *

Here is another story from Dagmar...her father came home from the front, a long leave maybe 6 months, when Dagmar was just a few months old. And from the very first sight of her father, Dagmar would never allow anyone else to feed her, or change her nappy, etc....it was love at first sight for both father and daughter.

Then the father was sent back to the front, where he was killed. But Dagmar always remembered him, even though she was so tiny.

One more story...I was studying Sufism at the Pt. Reyes National Seashore in California, and these folks would come over from Germany to that center...that is how we became friends. And they told me how still at that time, in the 1990's, people in Germany would go out every summer to the sites of the concentration camps with picnic lunch, music, etc., and just laugh, play and dance there...there is still a sense of sorrow and suffering, and my friends were doing all they could to lighten that darkness.

And, I remember when I accidentally came upon Manzanar, in my travels exploring California -- there also, I was struck by a kind of sorrow. So I thought of my friends, and just spent a couple of days at Manzanar, some peace and prayers and such. Strange...almost nothing there now, except the sign, but the sense of sorrow is strong.

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+2

I think you told the story of people picnicking and partying at concentration camp sites before. At any rate, I have heard of it...  Somehow, I just can't understand how they could do that. :'(

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+2

Yes, I probably have told it here on SOLVED...I was impressed, and have told the story pretty much everywhere...and yes, I can see also how it can be just incomprehensible, very disrespectful...but if you knew the people, that would very likely make a difference too...their motivation very tender, respectful, done more in a spirit of healing, really I think.

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